


Miserable Liars

by L_C_Weary



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Episode: s01e12 Creep, Light Angst, M/M, POV Alex Manes, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 05:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18565105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_C_Weary/pseuds/L_C_Weary
Summary: The conversation between Alex and Michael before the prison explodes, from Alex's point of view.





	Miserable Liars

**Author's Note:**

> This fic features the word-to-word conversation from the episode, which I definitely don't claim as mine.
> 
> Not first language. No beta. You can figure the rest.

The sirens are blaring and you're running down the stairs. Your hips and leg ache. You have to be quick, there is a reason Michael stayed down and you need to figure out how to get him out of the building. It doesn't matter that aliens, aliens like him, were kept captive down there. Guerin might have acted like a player, but he would never, ever leave anyone in a building about to blow up without giving getting them out alive a chance. Especially not people, who could provide him the support he longed for.

Your heart's hammering in between your ribs, creating another thrumming sound, next to your steps. You hate explosions. You have a good reason and one less leg to hate explosions. As you descend deeper into the building, there are moments when you feel like you can't breathe, yet oxygen still gets to your lungs, not releasing you from the burden of consciousness. You fear you won't find 7A, it's your legs that find a way, somehow.

The sound of banging and the evacuation protocol is loud in your ears. Your voice is heavy with desperation when you scream out, even before you reach the end of the stairs.

"Guerin!" The room is filled with cells - so much of them -, only separating the tortured from you by glass. Guerin stands in front of one, trying to break it with a fire extinguisher. He's desperate and he's not thinking. He's completely out of his mind and you can't blame him. There are cells all along the walls, there are people in every single one of them. Old and anguished people. Or aliens. Just hours away from that forsaken town and you had no idea, he had no idea, god knows who had an idea. And when he finally gets here, he can't do anything to save his people, these aliens.

Aliens. According to your father a violent race. A violent race, maybe, right now treated like labs rats, treated without humanity by a lot more violent race.

"Guerin, come one! We have to go!" Your legs have a bit of difficulty stopping in front of him without tumbling over yourself. You take a deep breath, trying to come up with something that is not just pleading.

There's no reason that sounds convincing enough. Please leave behind your race, please leave behind those people you waited for so long, please let people suffer, while you run. Please ignore your kind heart. Please don't drop the macho swagger bullshit now. Please leave with me. Please don't die. Please. You consider, if you are physically strong enough to force him outside.

For a moment your eyes flicker to the cell Guerin tries to dismantle. It contains an old woman in shabby clothes, her eyes are vibrant. The glass of the cell is already cracked. You wonder if he did it with his alien powers.

When he turns towards you, the pain your body feels gets overwhelmed by your emotions. Your senses are tingling. You are scared. You are too afraid to even think. You weren't this petrified since Iraq. Before the computer science came, before the base came, before not being in the front line came.

It was not better being the mind behind operation, definitely not when you could actually hear and feel the bombing just outside. The pressure is always unbearable, minds racing, bodies shaking with the weight of the situation, yet out in the field, there's not even time to contemplate. There, it's only instinctive fear.

"I have to get through!" he screams back. You see your feelings mirrored in his eyes, in his movements. He had to hear the evacuation notices, but he can't leave without saving them, without at least trying. He's so scared and desperate and angry and, buried under everything else, hopeful. Hope that's fading fast, because no one was going to make it alive, he can feel it too.

"The alarm is not a suggestion, okay? Nothing gets out alive," you tell him, because you left nice and selfless back in the Middle East, if you can only save Guerin that was enough. Guilt and humanity be damned. You don't need to care about anybody else. No matter what was going on in that damn facility. Only Guerin matters.

You can see his mind is a battlefield. He wants to save the people inside the cells, being fully aware that there's no way. You want to save them too, a deep, very human part of you that you couldn't drown out so easily since you got back in Roswell, now protests, crying out that you have to. The soldier in you knows it's not possible. You remember how war works, so you concentrate on the one thing you have to do, the one thing you need to do, the thing you couldn't, wouldn't leave without.

Michael Guerin is not going to die in this place. That is the main objective. And if you can't make him do it, if the main objective fails, and you try not to think about what it will feel like to blow up - it won't feel like your leg, anyways, you won't even have time to feel pain -, you can't leave him behind, can't leave him alone.

You did it so many times before, and, of course this time it's different, this time if he doesn't want you to, you should, every instinct of yours tells you to, and yes, with a different history between the two of you it would be easier. Maybe you could, if all the two of you shared was nostalgic, bittersweet, meaningless infatuation, if what was left was lust and nothing more. Then you could do. Ugliness spreading in your heart, but you could.

Yet, not matter how you try to rearrange the messy parts of your heart, no matter how much you love the curls, the enthusiastic clumsiness back in the days or the determined touches nowadays, unfortunately, that's not what you fell in love with.

Or not what you loved, as you tried to sell it. Because you loved the crooked smile, you loved the survival in him, you loved the sarcasm, you loved the caring heart, you loved the secret genius of him. And you still love it. Those things are hidden better these days, and you are less willing to get through his thick skin to get to those. Still, no matter what, you love him. And it already broke your heart so many times.

"They're my family, Alex!" There goes the boy, who never had a family. He finds it in a building just about to blow up. You are not sure what to say, how to even approach the situation. The lady-like robot announces you have two minutes. In the back of your mind you calculate the time needed to get to the door. You still have some, although not for long.

You know your family is shit, but you've seen so many good ones. Flawed but loving families, the Ortechoes or the DeLuca ladies. And, yes, maybe even yours has potential. You have a lot to forgive your mother, yet she’s still there, and your brothers are easily influenced the guiding hand of your father, but they are not cruel like him. There must be something that left no other choice, that forced Flint into this.

Or maybe he was okay with torturing people. Maybe some people get shitty families and they either wonder about it for decades or try to build a new one. People do that, don't they? That's how it had to work. At least, you – and Michael too – had to have a second chance at something beautiful. That's what you are trying to take away from him, his family, when there's nothing you can offer him in return, not comfort, just your presence in these moments, if he really chooses to end it here, in this filthy prison of your father's.

"Alright, maybe," you try, but you just know there's not enough time. Opening the cells without brute force, there is no time for that, it's not a coincidence Guerin tries to do it by sheer muscle power, manually demolishing the glass separating him from the old lady.

Every beat of you heart punches you in the throat, leaving you breathless and dizzy. There's an emotion bubbling up inside you. The thing you want to say to him basically falls out of your mouth, at a surprising volume. "But you are mine!"

It's true, yet you never thought about it so practically. It was just something you gathered from other people, the sense of safety and admiration they expressed when they talked about their family was disturbingly similar to what you felt when you thought about a high school fling, what you still feel as you tried to mend this relationship with time and communication. He has to understand it. He must. Somehow, thought lying, walking away, ten years, hurting, fucked up futures, lost hands and legs, wasted teenage potentials, resentment, self-pity, through everything, that was the truth and he had to see it.

Guerin's face falls. "What?" He hates to hear it here and now, like this. His rage resurfaces, he's so mad at you for doing this to him. "No! You got to go, Alex." He says your name, begging furiously for you to do the sensible thing. He clearly knows you enough to realise you are incapable of doing the sensible thing around him.

"I don't look away, Guerin," you say and it feels like a confession of love. It is a confession of love, you just can't say those words. They’ve lost their meaning to you, after all, even Jesse Manes said he loves his sons. And if he says love is what he did to your family, the home military, the overbearing, the disgusting beliefs, if what he did to Guerin's hand was for, was to protect you, then it's not what Guerin deserves. No, you can't say it, you had to say something more fitting, something your mind repeated a thousand times.

His emotion are on display again and he wants to pour all of them at you. You would deserve it. He feels betrayed that you do this to him now, he feels afraid that you would actually hurt yourself to save him, he feels hopeful that you actually mean it.

"No! Go!" He knows what you mean, as you knew exactly what he meant, when he said he never looks away. Therefore he answers with mean words, he fights ugly. His words turn cruel and deliberate. He, not letting go the last string of hope, wants you to get out of here. He wants to save you, because he can't imagine he is worth your suffering. He never looked away, because wonderful Michael Guerin can't even bear the thought that he could be your demise. How silly of him.

"I don't love you! I don't!" For one eternal second it hurts like a motherfucker. Then you feel like smiling, if you weren't in a life or death situation. He doesn't bother with past tense, like you did - as a way of saving your pride. Because he's an awful, miserable liar and he can't do it properly. He can hide things, that's for sure, but he can't lie to anyone's face. He confesses not with idioms, but with denial instead.

"We've been holding onto this thing… and what? It's gotten us nowhere. Just let go." That's it, he's giving you the ultimate reason to walk away. It's funny. It hurts him so much more than you, because after all the bullshit, now you understand.

He still doesn't get it. You don't look away. You acted like a coward and an asshole more than once and so did he, but the two of you are more powerful than that. You need it to get through his thick skull. You are asking him to abandon him family, his hope at a not lonely future and the truth he was always looking for, with not much of a retribution or much to offer. Well, sucks to be him, you are not falling for his bullshit and you are not letting him die either.

There are tears in your eyes, but not for the reason he wants you to have. "You're a miserable liar," you tell him and he can't argue that. He seems exhausted. He can't think of anything else. The last weapon he had to save you didn't work. You do feel like crying. He looks broken and you want to hold him. If you've already ran out of time, you will hold him until the end.

**Author's Note:**

> (Find me on [tumblr](http://answermywearyquery.tumblr.com/).)


End file.
